Seventeen countries, 28 states and 122 cities later, the USC Shoah Foundation 20th Anniversary Guest Book is officially closed.

Peter Braunfeld recounts experiencing anti-Semitism as a child in Vienna after Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany.  This testimony clip is featured in the new IWitness activity, A thing of the Past? Anti-Semitism Past and Present.

USC students have until March 16, 2015 to enter this year’s Student Voices Short Film Contest.

Xia Shuqin recalls the Nanjing massacre on Dec. 13, 1937 and how she hid from Japanese soldiers during the invasion.

Hema Panesar has just joined the USC Shoah Foundation education team as coordinator of educational programs, bringing experience in digital education, museums and history.Panesar received her bachelor’s degree in history from UC Berkeley and master’s in museum studies from New York University. Her master’s thesis was titled “Digitize Me: Museum Educators and Their Digital Oriented Visitors,” and it focused on how museum visitors are becoming more central to the museum experience, particularly digitally and online.

April's visit is canceled. For the next scheduled visit click here Free and open to the public, monthly Institute visits give guests a chance to explore the life stories of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides and to discover how their memories are being used to overcome prejudice, intolerance and bigotry.Description:

Three weeks ago, USC Shoah Foundation gathered in Poland to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And just last week, staff from the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews returned the favor.

Andrzej Siemiatkowski speaks in Polish about the medical experiements and forced labor he experienced in the Auschwitz camp complex.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Erna Viterbi, philanthropist and longtime supporter of USC Shoah Foundation.Erna Finci Viterbi, a descendant of Sephardic Jews, was born in Sarajevo but fled Yugoslavia with her family during World War II. They were deported to the Parma region of Italy and interned in the village Gramignazzo di Sissa, but were saved from deportation to the extermination camps by the townspeople. Erna and her family were able to escape to Switzerland for the rest of the war. In 1950, they moved to California.

Rose Kaplovitz reflects on the end of WWII and liberation - featured in the IWitness activity Found Poetry – A Language Arts Lesson.

As I completed the transaction for my first foray with Airbnb for a trip to Paris with my daughter, I was pleasantly surprised by the note that popped up from Christophe, the manager, who alerted me that I could also have a ride from the airport with Karyn with whom he has an arrangement. 

Testimony can be intense, heart-wrenching, and emotional. It can include stories that are harrowing or even hopeful. And it can also be poetic.

Rosa Lamb teaches 11th and 12th grade Global Studies: Holocaust and Genocide at Lake View High School in Chicago.How do you use IWitness in your class?I used it last year to have students make an IWitness video. The students created videos used for the purpose of teaching others about a specific theme or topic of the Holocaust. What kinds of reactions do students have to watching testimony?

Kori Street, USC Shoah Foundation Director of Education, will join other education experts for a panel discussion at the Responsibility 2015 conference in New York City, which will commemorate the centennial anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Dachau camp liberator Paul Parks recalls experiencing racial discrimination in the United States after returning home from fighting in WWII.    

Adam Herceg, a Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century graduate from Slovakia, marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day at his school on January 27 by showing testimony of a survivor his students already felt a strong connection to.

Martin Aaron speaks on trying to reconnect with any family members who had survived the Holocaust after he was liberated from Bergen-Belsen. He recalls how his search led him to family in America.

USC Shoah Foundation and its Center for Advanced Genocide Research are hosting two events this week that are free and open to the public.

After displaying testimonies from the Visual History Archive in its exhibit The Orient in Bohemia this fall, the Jewish Museum in Prague continues utilizing filmed testimony in its latest exhibit: “Shattered Hopes: Postwar Czechoslovakia as a Crossroads of Jewish Life.”

Kurt Wehle, one of the post-WWII leaders of Czech Jewry, describes the postwar climate in Prague up to the Communist putsch of 1948, when he had to escape from Czechoslovakia. This testimony clip is featured in the new exhibit, “Shattered Hopes: Postwar Czechoslovakia as a Crossroads of Jewish Life,” at the Jewish Museum in Prague.

USC Shoah Foundation is pleased to announce Stephen A. Cozen as chairman of its Board of Councilors.

Herbert Friedman discusses his mother’s decision to take in three Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany. Friedman attributes his family’s decision because of their faith and his mother’s prominent role within their synagogue New Haven, Connecticut.  

Ellen Brandt recalls the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws in Berlin and her participation in a Jewish youth movement BDJJ or Bund Deutsch-Jüdischer Jugend. She also reflects how the organization helped her connect with her Jewish identity.

USC Gould School of Law Room 130Since his appointment to the ICTY in 2000, Judge Pocar has served as a Judge in a Trial Chamber, where he sat on the first case concerned with rape as a crime against humanity, and in the Appeals Chamber of the Tribunal, where he is still sitting. As a Judge of the Appeals Chamber, he is also a Judge of the Appeals Chamber for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). On appeal, he has participated in the adoption of the final judgments in several ICTY and ICTR cases, heard in both the Hague and in Arusha, Tanzania.

Auschwitz, the final destination of Jewish people from across Europe destined to be murdered as a part of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Auschwitz, a place that housed prisoners of many religions, persuasions, minorities and nationalities, but whose evil reputation is seared onto our collective conscience because the five gas chambers at Birkenau were there for one reason only - to devour the lives of 960,000 Jews. Auschwitz, which has evolved into a universal symbol of man's inhumanity to man – and indeed it does remind us just how cruel human beings can be.

Kiril Feferman’s research topic may be rarely studied now, but that may change after his fellowship at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

A Holocaust studies professor from the Russian State University for Humanities in Moscow has been awarded the 2015-16 Center Fellowship by USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Otari Amaglobeli, a military surgeon with the First Ukrainian Front discusses the population of Auschwitz and the medical assistance his unit provided to prisoners upon liberation on Jan. 27, 1945.